The acts, civil and military, of the Roman people, henceforth free, their annual magistrates, and the sovereignty of the laws, more powerful than that of men, I will now proceed to recount.  The haughty insolence of the last king had caused this liberty to be the more welcome:  for the former kings reigned in such a manner that they all in succession may be deservedly reckoned founders of those parts at least of the city, which they independently added as new dwelling-places for the population, which had been increased by themselves.  Nor is there any doubt that that same Brutus, who gained such renown from the expulsion of King Superbus, would have acted to the greatest injury of the public weal, if, through the desire of liberty before the people were fit for it, he had wrested the kingdom from any of the preceding kings.  For what would have been the consequence, if that rabble of shepherds and strangers, runaways from their own peoples, had found, under the protection of an inviolable sanctuary, either freedom, or at least impunity for former offences, and, freed from all dread of regal authority, had begun to be distracted by tribunician storms, and to engage in contests with the fathers in a strange city, before the pledges of wives and children, and affection for the soil itself, to which people become habituated only by length of time, had united their affections?  Their condition, not yet matured, would have been destroyed by discord; but the tranquillizing moderation of the government so fostered this condition, and by proper nourishment brought it to such perfection, that, when their strength was now developed, they were able to bring forth the wholesome fruits of liberty.  The first beginnings of liberty, however, one may date from this period, rather because the consular authority was made annual, than because of the royal prerogative was in any way curtailed.  The first consuls kept all the privileges and outward signs of authority, care only being taken to prevent the terror appearing doubled, should both have the fasces at the same time.  Brutus, with the consent of his colleague, was first attended by the fasces, he who proved himself afterward as keen in protecting liberty as he had previously shown himself in asserting it.  First of all he bound over the people, jealous of their newly-acquired liberty, by an oath that they would suffer no one to be king in Rome, for fear that later they might be influenced by the importunities or bribes of the royal house.  Next, that a full house might give additional strength to the senate, he filled up the number of senators, which had been diminished by the assassinations of Tarquinius, to the full number of three hundred, by electing the principal men of equestrian rank to fill their places:  from this is said to have been derived the custom of summoning into the senate both the patres and those who were conscripti.  They called those who were elected, conscripti, enrolled, that is, as a new senate.  It is surprising how much that contributed to the harmony of the state, and toward uniting the patricians and commons in friendship.